


Let All the Children Use It

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Series: Just After the Mid-Century [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Drag Queens, Female Newton Pulsifer, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 05:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19900267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: It's 1975, and London just got its first dedicated gay club. Aziraphale and Crowley try makeup, being friends with lesbians, and looking after the gay kids.





	Let All the Children Use It

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to [cunticus](https://cuntcious.tumblr.com/) and [Pogopop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pogopop/pseuds/pogopop) for their beta reading work. And a special thank you to Janzeib, for being my makeup and makeup related feelings consultant. 
> 
> This fic is a sequel, and I'd really advise you go and read He Knows It's All Worthwhile first.
> 
> Please look out here for period typical language of especially trans related stuff. I've also done my best to research this topic in terms of the time period, and I'm non-binary myself, but undoubtedly some things will have slipped through the cracks; any egregious errors, please do let me know!

Crowley really did like Madame Tracy. She’d been one of the first people he’d told when he’d been sacked last year because his boss found out he lived with another man in a not-so-friendlike way. Of course, Aziraphale had been first, but mostly he’d just immediately started stressing about money and nonsense like that, whereas Tracy had offered to show him the ropes of drag and said, firmly but kindly, “And you’ll need to get a _lot_ better at makeup than you are, dearie, but I’ll teach you.”

So really Crowley was her protégé, and she often took him along to gigs as a warm-up act. It wasn’t very much money at all, but it was enough between Crowley’s other gigging and his side-business of buying for-spares motorbikes and Frankenstiening them into something customers would actually want to be seen riding. Plus, he enjoyed it immensely. Tonight, Tracy had gotten them a show at a private members club, for the more classy homosexual than those who frequented disco nights. They were in the green room, which was a hell of a lot nicer than a lot of the back-bar pubs they’d worked in, and even had a partition to change behind.

“Did you hear,” Madame Tracy said, her mouth open as she delicately applied mascara, “that they’re opening a gay nightclub?”

“I hadn’t heard that at all,” Crowley replied, and he was usually pretty up on his knowledge of what happened gay-wise in London town. “Where?”

“Charing Cross,” she replied, batting her eyelids and turning to Crowley. “Oh, you look lovely, dear. You’re getting better at dressmaking all the time.”

“Aziraphale helped,” Crowley said proudly. “He got clippings for me - for inspiration.”

Madame Tracey nodded. “What a lovely man. Bang, they’re calling it - the club, obviously. I know some of the owners, so I’ll be getting us some shows there.”

“Will you zip me up?” Crowley asked, turning his back. Tracy got up to do so. “Is there even enough of a crowd to run a gays-only nightclub?”

Tracy laughed as she did up the zip. “Oh, darling, it’s obvious you’ve never been to New York. There’s _always_ a crowd.”

Crowley turned back to her. “You’ve been to New York? When?”

“Years and years ago,” she said mysteriously, sauntering over to her handbag. “Now, I’m going to do a tarot card reading for tonight. Want one done too?”

Crowley wasn’t particularly superstitious, but he said yes anyway, because he always did and it seemed a shame to break the tradition now. 

  


* * *

“How does it feel?” Crowley said.

“You’ve done a marvellous job,” Aziraphale started, then couldn’t find what he wanted to say next. He leaned in to examine himself further. His eyebrows were too bushy to get the point that Crowley managed, but he’d still shaped them somewhat, filling in past the arch. A shimmering blue that melded into navy on his eyelids, thin black lines rimming his eyes, then red on his lips. Light blush, foundation. The sensation of it was odd, too. He could see his eyelashes because of the mascara - or maybe now he was only just paying attention to them - and his skin felt different than normal.

“I’m... I’m not sure about it,” Aziraphale said. He didn’t look completely transformed by the makeup or anything like that, but he was, in some senses, transformed into the person who would wear makeup. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that person.

“How so?”

“It’s me,” Aziraphale said, with some difficulty after a long pause. “I mean, of course it’s me. But... it isn’t. At all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that it feels strange. Maybe I could see myself doing this as... performance, something like that. But... it feels like wearing someone else’s clothes. Your clothes.”

This was actually more of a hypothetical, because for starters most of Crowley’s clothes wouldn’t fit Aziraphale, and secondly, Aziraphale had exactly the same level of desire to try them on as he did to give up this whole homosexuality thing and marry a woman.

“Why?”

“Because they aren’t my clothes,” Aziraphale said. “It’s someone else’s clothes. They don’t fit.”

“Do you think the colours are wrong?”

“No— it’s the cut of it, Crowley.”

“But it’s just you,” he said. “You with blue on your face.”

“But it isn’t,” Aziraphale stressed. “Makeup— means something, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”

“So you don’t like what the makeup means,” Crowley said, leaning back. “I’d have thought you’d be very comfortable with... the feminine.”

“I am,” Aziraphale said, but even as he did, he wasn’t sure how true that was. He was fine when Crowley was feminine; so what was different about him? He felt like he did when in university he stumbled across another country’s literary movement. Lost, confused, and unlikely to understand the context.

“But not this.”

“This is more like something you’d do.”

“We can share makeup, Aziraphale,” Crowley said. “I don’t own it. Is it because it’s my thing, that you don’t like it?”

“I don’t know, my dear,” he said. “I just don’t think I like being... either which way.”

“How so?”

Crowley didn’t always know he was doing it, but he could have a very particular way of asking probing questions that would lead whoever had the misfortune of being the object of his curiosity to talk themselves into a circle. Honestly, it could be a tad Socratic, in the way that Crowley asked questions with no real intention of providing much of an answer himself. Most of the time, everyone would walk away, somewhat unhappy for having come to no conclusions after hours of discussion. As it was, Aziraphale was getting flustered and uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

Aziraphale groaned. “Very masculine, or very feminine! I’m just... not. I’m in the middle,” he declared.

“You’re a man,” Crowley said, a slight smile on his face. Now his intonation has shifted to be more akin to a teacher asking a question to which they already knew the answer but to which Aziraphale had no inkling. What, exactly, was Crowley looking for here? “I have proof of that.”

“Because I was born like this,” Aziraphale stressed. “Not because of something I did. Because of something I am.”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale oddly. “If you’d have been born a woman, would you wear makeup?”

“I— well, I don’t know! Who knows why women wear it?”

“I do,” Crowley said. Aziraphale scoffed. “No, I do. Because they want to.”

Crowley was fishing for a more in depth discussion about the topic, because there was no way on earth a man as sharp as him thought that’d be the end all and be all, but Aziraphale just didn’t feel up for it. “Well,” Aziraphale said, the dark squirming inside of him getting stronger. “I love it on you, and women are very pretty, or whatever, but I don’t think I suit it.”

“I think you look very pretty.”

Oh, that didn’t help things at all. In fact it made his stomach tighten uncomfortably. “I think—“ Aziraphale said. “I think I’d like to take it off, actually.”

Crowley was clearly a bit disappointed at that, but just nodded kissed Aziraphale on the forehead, and did as he asked, gently.

“If I’d been born a woman,” Crowley said, “I think I’d wear suits.”

“Like Katherine Hepburn?”

“You know who Katherine Hepburn is?”

“I’m out of touch, dear, not a philistine.”

Crowley jerked his head in a _well, if you insist_ sort of way, smiling cheekily. Then his mouth slipped as he concentrated on wiping the makeup off Aziraphale’s skin. “No. Like my suits. Men’s suits. I’d have my hair short, like the modern girls do. And from a distance, people would think I was a man. Like how from the right distance now - when I’m done up - they think I’m a woman.”

Aziraphale brushed his knuckles softly against Crowley’s cheek, full of love. He didn’t have much of a creative vision, but Crowley’s imagination - his ability to perceive everything as if looking through a diamond at the inverse reflections - was incredible. Aziraphale wasn’t masculine at all, he knew that, but the suits gave him plausible deniability in amongst all the softness. But he didn’t really see himself as feminine, either, or desiring to be. He just... _was_ , in whatever form would make life easier for him, and didn’t take particular pleasure in bending the rules as Crowley did. “You really are one of a kind.”

Crowley just hummed, and then the silence became charged, because he clearly wanted to say something, but wasn’t. In fact, it took until all the makeup was off for him to spit it out. “Some days, I think about... well, yeah.” He cleared his throat.

“You could be more vague,” Aziraphale deadpanned.

Crowley pulled an insolent face, but it didn’t ring truly flippant. “I think,” he mumbled, “About if I’d been born a woman.”

Aziraphale frowned. He didn’t know what to make of that. “You... hmm.”

“Not all the time,” Crowley added quickly. “Just, some days. It’s why I like drag. It lets me be that, for a while.”

“Would you want to be that... always?”

He thought about it for a moment, scooping up all of the wipes into the bin. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

“You could,” Aziraphale said softly. “You could be... what is it Madame Tracy is? A transvestite?”

“Transsexual,” Crowley corrected. “I’m already a transvestite, technically. But no, I don’t want to do that. I’m, for the most part, fine.” Not happy, Aziraphale noted. Fine. Hopefully it was just a Crowleyism.

“You know I love you, and if you wanted—“

“I don’t want to,” Crowley said firmly. “It’s just that on some days, I think, what if. Don’t you ever think, what if?”

“What if what?”

“What if you’d been born female?”

Crowley looked very pale right now, his eyes darting and refusing to meet Aziraphale’s. “Do you wish you had been?” Aziraphale asked, levelly.

“No, angel,” Crowley said, clearly beginning to be very frustrated that Aziraphale wasn’t getting it.

He grabbed Crowley’s bony hand. It was clammy and damp and he thought that they both must be very nervous right now. “I’m sorry, my love. I’m trying.”

“I know. I don’t wish I’d been born a woman. It’s like... you know how you want to visit France?”

“Yes?”

“But you don’t want to live there.”

“God, no. The French are hooligans.”

Crowley scoffed a laugh. “Right, well. I don’t want to be a woman. I just want to visit womanhood.”

That... made a lot more sense. Aziraphale squeezed his hand. “Is there anything you’d like me to do differently? On the days when you... want to visit France?”

They shared a smile with one another. “I’m not sure,” Crowley said slowly. “I suppose I might wear makeup on those days.”

“You already wear makeup.”

“As a part of performance,” Crowley pointed out. “Or when I’m practicing. Not just because I fancy it. Y’know - to dinner, or something.”

“Yes, I— you can’t go out wearing makeup, darling,” Aziraphale said, seized by fear. “You’ll be—”

“I know, I know,” Crowley said. “I don’t actually have a death wish. Just around the house.”

“Oh, then yes,” Aziraphale agreed. “I think you look lovely in it.”

Crowley’s grin came slowly, but when it did, it was beatific.

* * *

“There's no point,” whispered the American, quite loudly (and rudely, if you asked Aziraphale). “Look at them.”

Her companion, a younger black woman, shushed her and approached the counter with a big smile. “Hi,” she began. English, thank God. “Are you the owner?”

“Do I look like I own a bookshop?” Crowley said, swinging his legs down from the counter and slamming closed his copy of NME, as best as you could slam close a floppy magazine. “Aziraphale, they want to speak to you.”

“I heard,” Aziraphale said, putting the books he was sorting alphabetically on the side. “What can I help you ladies with?”

“We were wondering if we would be able to host a book club?” the English one said hopefully.

“A book club,” Aziraphale repeated, thought for a second, and then shook his head. “No, no, I shouldn’t think so.”

“We’ll pay,” the American said. “And it’s an all-women’s group, so not rowdy at all. At least take our flyer.”

She put a pink piece of paper on the counter and slid it towards Aziraphale, who picked it up with interest he tried to hide.

_SAPPHO’S_

_LESBIAN SOCIAL CLUB SINCE 1972_

At which point he stopped reading, glanced up at the women, and put two-and-two together and came to _they’re lesbians_.

“Let me see that,” Crowley said, sliding his sunglasses up to peer at the cheap print. “Oh, lesbians. You should let them,” he said, turning back to his magazine absentmindedly. “I owe a great debt to the lesbians.”

How on earth did Crowley owe a debt to all lesbians? What did that even _mean_? “I don’t even have any chairs,” Aziraphale fretted. “Aren’t there any other bookshops?”

“We’ve been round dozens of them,” said the English one, “and they’ve all turned us down. Or they already have a womens’ group, or a lesbians’ group, or they don’t like gays. Usually it’s that one.”

“I say, why do lesbians need so many book clubs?” Aziraphale muttered, skimming over more of the flyer.

“There’s quite a lot of them out there, angel,” Crowley said reasonably, nudging him, and giving the most unfair puppy dog eyes.

“We heard that you stock some gay literature,” the American carried on, “so we thought you might be open to the idea.”

‘Gay literature stockist’ might be pushing it. Aziraphale had as many first editions of Oscar Wilde he could get his hands on, signed copies of _The Naked Civil Servant_ and _Howl_ , and a sizeable collection of gay and lesbian pulp novels that Crowley’d had managed to blag off a friend who was moving flats and wanted to declutter. They sat in Aziraphale’s back room, in case anyone asked. No one ever did.

Aziraphale had also read all of them.

“Go on,” said Crowley. “I’ll sort it.”

“What night might you want it on?” Aziraphale asked the women. They broke into sunny smiles.

“Mondays!”

“See? I'm never out on Mondays.”

Aziraphale wrung his hands. "But what if we get... targeted?”

“I'll sort it," Crowley said, more seriously. It was clear he wanted to say more, but couldn’t in front of strangers. To be honest, Aziraphale seriously doubted Crowley’s ability to do anything about potential backlash - it was, after all, Aziraphale who contacted their landlord when they had a problem, because Crowley would mysteriously become too busy to make a call. Still, Crowley was jerking his head imploringly: _Go on. Go on, angel._

“Oh, fine!” Aziraphale conceded. He _was_ soft. “Speak to Crowley, then. I’m going back to my books.”

With that, he turned on his heel, and tried to leave the whole blasted thing behind him, at least for a couple of hours.

  


* * *

There was a queue around the side of Bang, a long snake of young men and women, dressed in their best gender-bending clothes, drunk or on their way and excited to try out London’s first gay nightclub.

But that wasn’t where Aziraphale was. Aziraphale was around by the staff entrance, waiting for Crowley, because he didn’t like Crowley walking home by himself, and Crowley couldn’t take his motorbike in, because his dress and wig were too big to fit in the seat compartment. But what Aziraphale saw first was not his lover, but a skinny youth half-stumbling down the pavement.

Aziraphale hadn't really been intending to intervene (it was just after midnight, after all, and though it was a Monday, drunk teens were a dime a dozen, and this was his good coat that he didn't fancy getting vomit on), but then the boy tripped, landed on the ground with a thud, and stayed there.

Aziraphale rushed over to him. “Are you alright?”

The boy just laughed painfully. He looked too young to be drunk, with his baby face and golden hair, but he was definitely a teenager, wearing a slim-cut tank top and jeans, and with a bruise on his eye. He looked a lot like he’d just come out of Bang. “‘m good,” he slurred. “All good.”

He clearly wasn’t. Aziraphale gently goaded him to sit up on the curb, and wished he had some water to give the lad. But what he did have was a couple of coins in his pocket. “Is there someone I can call? Where are your friends?”

“I dunno,” the boy said miserably. “No. Parents don’t wanna... who are you?”

“I’m Aziraphale. And you?”

“Adam.” He scrubbed his face with his palms, grimacing at the grit on them. “Aziraphale. I know you.”

“You must be thinking of someone else,” Aziraphale said, since he’d never seen this boy before in his life. “Can I call your parents?"

“No,” Adam said firmly. “They don’t want nothing... nothing to do with me.” His face crumpled and he heaved in a breath. Aziraphale understood immediately, and felt his heart sink.

“Oh, gracious--”

“Who's this, angel?”

It was Crowley, obviously, face bare of the makeup he’d been wearing for the show, his dress presumably packed away into the leather bag he carried. “He’s called Adam,” Aziraphale said. Then, quieter, “I think there’s something wrong.”

Crowley sighed. “You can’t go picking up strays off the street, Aziraphale. He’s probably just drunk or high or whatever the kids are doing these days.”

“Drunk, and he can’t go home, he says,” Aziraphale hissed. “We can't just leave him here. Look at him; he’ll get mugged, or-- worse.”

Crowley rolled his eyes and came round to face the two of them. Adam stared up at Crowley, his face wondrous, like he'd just seen an angel. “You’re the _drag queen_ ,” he breathed.

“I am, yes,” Crowley said, crouching down so he was level with them. He took Adam’s face gently in his hand, and examined it. “Who gave you that?”

Adam shook out of Crowley's lose grip and just stared down at his feet stubbornly, jaw jutting out. He clearly wasn't about to answer.

“Do you have someone we can call?” Aziraphale said, propping up the boy again when he slumped.

“Where's your dress gone?” Adam asked Crowley.

“In my bag. Where’s home? We’ll pay for a cab.”

“I don’t... I don't have a home.”

Aziraphale stared at Crowley imploringly. Crowley sighed. “Fine. Let me just hail a taxi.”

Aziraphale beamed at him, then took off his jacket to wrap around the boy’s bony shoulders, and the two of them dragged him into a cab. Once back at the bookshop, Aziraphale got the boy some water and put him to bed on the settee, and Crowley leant against the kitchen counter, putting on an unimpressed and bemused expression, though he too had fretted over if Adam was warm enough.

Crowley still had small remnants of his makeup staining his face; red lipstick not quite washed away, the slightest hue of blue over his black-rimmed eyes. He always looked a certain way after he'd done a show, gigging or drag; relaxed, like all that pent up energy had been spent.

And then he glanced at Adam, who frowned in his sleep. He must be fifteen or so, and Aziraphale had been there, more or less. Not literally alone, but certainly feeling like it, as he did before he met Crowley. Before the gay bar, really.

“Good show?” Aziraphale asked softly, trying to pull his thoughts away from a darker place.

“Always,” Crowley said with a smile. Aziraphale came over and gave him a big hug. “What's that for?”

“Just... feeling grateful.”

Crowley hummed, his arms coming to wrap around Aziraphale's shoulders, rocking them slightly. It took him a moment - it always did - but then he responded, “Me too.”

  


* * *

Adam woke the next morning with a start, a panicked expression on his face as he scrambled upright against the arm. “What the fuck!?”

“Language," Aziraphale said mildly over his coffee. “Do you remember much of last night?”

Realisation dawned on Adam's face, and his eyes jumped between Crowley and Aziraphale, who were having breakfast together at the table. “Yeah. Thank you-- sorry, thanks,” he said, like he wasn’t quite sure which of them he was supposed to be settling on.

“You're welcome,” Aziraphale said. “There's food here, if you'd like to join us.”

“Er, I should probably be going,” Adam said.

“Eat,” Crowley instructed, not looking up from his magazine. “If you’re hungry.”

After a long moment, Adam did push off his sheet and wander hesitantly towards them, picking up a slice of toast and buttering it awkwardly. “Where am I?”

“My bookshop in Soho,” Aziraphale said, and Adam dropped his knife.

“That's how I know you,” Adam said. “My friend Pepper runs a book club here!” He immediately looked more at ease; probably because he knew that Crowley and Aziraphale weren’t about to kick him out the same way his parents had.

“Pepper? Really?” Aziraphale leaned back in his chair. “My, it is a small world, isn't it?”

Crowley looked over his cup of tea. “Do you have somewhere to go, Adam?”

Adam’s guilty silence was answer enough, but he still tried to summon up an excuse. “I think I could find somewhere. Or maybe go home - my parents might’ve calmed down a bit…”

“You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to,” Aziraphale said.

“Where else would I go?” Adam asked. “I mean - thank you so much for what you’ve done, but I can’t stay with you. I don’t even know who you are. Not really.”

It was a fair enough point, but Aziraphale still felt a surge of unfounded protective instinct. He didn’t _want_ Adam to go home to parents whose love had abruptly become conditional, and he didn’t _want_ Adam to feel the way he did. But Aziraphale couldn’t really do anything about it, either.

So, in the end, they told Adam that he was always welcome back, if he needed a place to stay. And they let him go.

* * *

“How do you feel?” Aziraphale asked. He’d been watching Crowley’s focus for a little while now, instead of reading the book that rested in his lap, his legs stretched out on the bed. They were in their room, and it was past mid-afternoon on a particularly lazy Sunday. “When you… do yourself up?”

Crowley looked at Aziraphale in the reflection of the mirror. He was trying out some new makeup before he went on stage with it - a bold disco look, with shimmery eye shadow that faded into an almost cat-like shape. He’d also plucked his eyebrows down so they were tamed and more shapely, but Aziraphale had said that he’d probably stop speaking to him if he completely shaved them off, which was the only restriction he’d ever put on Crowley’s makeup. Not that he had any real intentions of doing that; mostly he’d threatened it because he felt like getting Aziraphale worked up over nothing. “How do I feel?” Crowley repeated slowly. “Good.”

“Why? Why does it-- make you feel like that?”

“It just does,” he said dismissively.

“I suppose I’m just curious. You don’t really talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Well, _it,_ ” Aziraphale said. “Even after you said you might wear it at home, you don’t, much.”

“I don’t need it at home.”

That caught Aziraphale’s attention. “How so?”

Crowley sighed. “I suppose it’s like my sunglasses. They’re-- a sort of armour, almost. When I’m on stage, I always have one or the other. Or both.”

Aziraphale, to give credit to him, had noticed that. They fell into silence for a while longer, with Aziraphale just watching Crowley work. Shortly, Crowley seemed to deem himself to be done after a flourish of red lipstick, and started tidying away all the little bits and bobs.

Then, he turned to Aziraphale. He looked beautiful. “Do you like it?”

“Makeup? I thought we talked about--”

“Not on _you_ , angel, on _me_.”

Aziraphale felt the tips of his ears go red. “Well… Yes. I do like it.”

Crowley hummed thoughtfully. “Why?”

Aziraphale hadn’t exactly been expecting the question, and thus felt rather thrown off by it. “It makes you look… powerful. Untouchable.”

It was overly-sincere, and probably not the answer Crowley was looking for, but it was true. Aziraphale never wanted Crowley to feel weak - they’d had enough of that in their younger years - so any leverage of power, rebellious or no, Crowley could wrangle, was good.

“Pretty?”

Crowley must be teasing now. “Yes, dear. Pretty,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley had a certain schooled blankness to his face which always signalled mischief. He gracefully rose, coming around to Aziraphale’s side of the bed. He trailed his fingers through the air to land on the book that rested against Aziraphale’s thighs. His fingernails were painted an aqua blue, and Aziraphale caught his hand in his to examine them.

“I saw David had his nails painted in a magazine,” Crowley explained at Aziraphale’s glance. “Thought it looked fetching.”

“Oh, you’re on first-name basis with the man now?”

Crowley laughed and perched on the bed next to Aziraphale, running his fingers up the flank of his waistcoat. “Well, David and I, we’re good friends.”

Aziraphale hummed, nosing in for a kiss. “Should I be jealous?”

“Only if he opens a bookshop,” Crowley murmured, closing the distance between them, before he trailed kisses on Aziraphale’s jaw, cheekbone, nipped at his earlobe, then, just when his breathing became heavier, pulled back with a grin _far_ too big to be innocent.

“What did you do?” Aziraphale asked, a little like he was pulling out of a daze. Crowley was smothering a laugh. He got up and handed Aziraphale a mirror.

Lipstick was smeared on Aziraphale’s mouth and pink face. “Oh, _Crowley_ \--”

“You look _great,_ angel--”

“You’re a bastard,” Aziraphale said, entirely without heat, and in fact sounding very, very fond. “A bastard, I’m telling you.”

  


* * *

A very tired-looking teenage girl with short hair and clothes that looked like the might’ve been prim and proper about ten hours ago, but were, for the time being, a rumpled shirt and loose tie over smart trousers, walked into the shop. She also had a full backpack over one shoulder.

“Are you Aziraphale?” she asked wearily, her accent fronted and Cockney.

“I am,” he said, closing his book and giving her his full attention. It wasn’t often that he got youngsters in the shop - mostly selling expensive first editions, obscure books of prophecy, and rare Bibles tended to do that.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, “But I need a place to stay tonight, and I heard-- I heard that you and Mr Crowley will put people up, if they need it. Because their parents won’t have them.”

Aziraphale immediately gleaned her meaning, and stood. “Yes, yes, of course, my dear. Did Adam send you?”

“No. Well, I’m a friend of a friend, sort of,” she said. “I know Pepper.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rowan,” she said, after a moment. “Yeah, Rowan.”

Maybe it wasn’t her real name, but it didn’t matter. Aziraphale made her a cup of tea, sat Rowan down, and chatted to her until closing.

* * *

They got other kids, after that, who Crowley tended to nickname ‘the strays’. It was a fairly unobtrusive thing, usually, since the kids were often intensely quiet and sad after whatever had happened at home, or they got along well with Crowley, who’d chat to them about music, telly, and movies. Meanwhile, Aziraphale would make dinner, and, once Crowley was done humble-bragging about his extensive record collection, help them formulate a plan.

Stonewall might’ve changed a lot - at least gay people had a foot in the door of the conversation, and at least a couple of years ago homosexuality was removed from the DSM - but it seemed to Aziraphale that it might be a good long while yet until this particular nastiness would end.

But he was more than willing to keep on doing this, until there were no more kids who needed help, or until he couldn’t anymore. Both, he felt, were in a far off future.

Meanwhile, the Sappho’s book club was a great success, and Anathema and Crowley quite unexpectedly became friends. Aziraphale wasn’t sure what it was exactly that they had in common, but Aziraphale actually got on quite well with her girlfriend Newt. ‘Newt’ didn’t seem to be her real name, but she wasn’t particularly inclined to divulge what it actually was, either, so Aziraphale didn’t press. He privately assumed it was something to do with Isaac Newton, and Newt’s tendency to go on about science and computers.

The book club was on tonight, and the shop was being occupied by a sizeable but humble collection of women. Crowley was mingling (though he’d generally clear out by the time actual discussion started, firstly given the club was for women, and secondly because he found _talking_ about reading to be among the lower circles of hell) and Aziraphale was organising and quality-checking new stock of books he’d bought for an astonishingly good price from a shop that’d recently dissolved.

Well, he had been, but when he’d returned from getting a new cocoa from upstairs, Newt was in his backroom, looking at herself in the full-length mirror in the corner.

“It suits you,” Aziraphale said, putting his mug on the side.

Newt jumped, gawking slightly, before composing herself. She was an owlish and gangly woman, who seemed to be made up mostly of limbs and awkward stammering. “Does it? I don’t know if it fits properly - I’ve never bought one before, and I, well, I wanted to look good for the book club. Anathema said it looked fine, but I sort of got nervous. She doesn’t know the first thing about blazers. It doesn’t seem quite right.”

“So you’re… hiding in my backroom?”

“Yes, since we got here,” said Newt. “That’s about the long and short of it.”

He took a few steps closer, examining the fit. “It’s a man's blazer,” he commented.

“Yes,” Newt said anxiously.

“Do you want my advice?”

“Yes, please.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Put your hands down, so they’re by your sides?” She did as he asked. “It’s fine,” he assured her. “But it’s fitting oddly at your hips because you have your bottom button done up.”

Newt jumped to undo it, then examined herself in the mirror. “It does look better, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, my dear. And when you sit down, undo the top one, too.”

She smiled at him gratefully. “I should’ve brought you with me, out to the shops. Would’ve saved a lot of fuss.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at shopping or the whole fashion business. That’s more Crowley’s domaine. I just like suits.”

“Me too,” Newt sighed, still looking herself over in the mirror. “Do you not think I’m overdressed?”

“You can never be overdressed, or overeducated.”

Newt caught his eye in the mirror. “Oscar Wilde.”

“Who else?” Aziraphale put a hand on her shoulder, catching her eye. “You look great,” he said. “You should go and say hello to the others.”

Newt nodded, steeling herself. “It is a bit silly to hide in the back room, isn’t it? Especially when it’s just the book group. I’ve met them all before.”

“It is,” he agreed with a smile. “But I understand. I’d want to look my best, too, if I was walking into a gang of gay men.”

Newt laughed, then ducked her head shyly. “Okay. I’m going.”

Aziraphale watched her go with a smile on his face. Then, he sipped his cocoa, and got to work, enjoying the background patter from the book club.

  


* * *

“Oh no,” Crowley muttered, flinging a hand out to stop Anathema from walking into the bookshop. It was late, and though theoretically Crowley was walking Anathema home after some small open-mic night she was supporting a friend at, their route had taken them past the bookshop.

“What? What?”

Crowley sighed. “Hell hath no fury like my angel scorned.”

He opened the door, and was immediately barraged with Aziraphale’s booming voice, directed at a man and a woman who cowered in the corner. Adam was there too, a bag at his feet, arms crossed over his chest and eyes glinting.

“You cannot have him!” Aziraphale shrieked. “He’s not yours to— to— abuse!”

“He’s our son,” the man said, and oh, no. Everything suddenly became very clear. “He’s too young—”

“He’s sixteen! If he were to have a girlfriend, that wouldn’t be too young!”

“Angel,” Crowley said softly. Aziraphale heard him - Crowley could tell by the way his hand waved - but carried on his tirade.

“He was like this when he was born and he’ll be like this when he’ll die! It isn’t a choice he’s making or some— rebellion! Children aren’t supposed to grow up thinking they’re wrong, and their parents' love shouldn’t be conditional on being conventional!” Aziraphale was up in the father’s face by this point, pointing a finger at him accusingly. “I won’t let you. I _won't let you!_ ”

The man looked like he was about to say something, but Anathema stepped in. “You two should go.”

“We’re not leaving without our son—“

“He’s with us,” Aziraphale said definitively. “As long as he needs to be here.”

“Adam,” the woman said firmly, but lovingly. “Please, come home with us.”

Adam glanced, wide-eyes and lost between Aziraphale and his parents. Then shook his head. “I’m staying.”

“Adam—”

“Go,” Anathema said, her voice full of contempt. Crowley realised that, with her piercings and tattoos and big dyke boots, she must seem something terrifying to the straight-laced breeders in front of them.

She held the door open for them as they scrambled their way out, full of frightened promises to come collect Adam soon.

Aziraphale looked up to Crowley, his eyes glinting, and looked sad and tightly-wound. It was then that Crowley was reminded again that they weren’t as young as they were before, and that Aziraphale had some lines around his eyes that seemed deeply set in the sorrow on his face. Aziraphale wasn’t so much a pretty boy anymore, but a handsome man, and he looked, for a moment, like all he wanted to do was collapse.

But he didn’t. He immediately started bustling around, making sure everyone was alright. He got Adam some sweet tea, and phoned around the Them to see who could come and help sort the situation out, because of course Crowley and Aziraphale couldn’t take him full time - their flat only had one bedroom. And once the crowd arrived, there was much to be sorted out, all of them swooping in like a flock of birds for Adam to armour himself in.

The night wore on, and Crowley kept on catching Adam staring at the crowd and focusing on no one, shell-shocked and exhausted, so Crowley (who felt very much the same) suggested they went to bed.

The Them headed off with promises to return in the morning, and Anathema said she’d put the word around the Sapphos, if any of them knew anyone who might be a help. Crowley offered to walk her the rest of the way home, but she pointed out that she was the one wearing steel-toe Doc Martens, and he was in jeans that were probably tight enough to cut off blood flow, which he had to give to her. To reassure Aziraphale, who was in some sort of over-protective hyperdrive, she borrowed a foot long bread knife to tuck into her belt, and left.

Adam fell asleep on the sofa again after inhaling some beans on toast for dinner. Crowley caught Aziraphale staring at the boy.

“We could’ve been him, you know,” Aziraphale murmured, gaze turning to Crowley. He was calmer now, but that sadness was back.

“And he could still be us.”

Aziraphale quirked a smile that fell quickly. “You know, sometimes I think, I’m so very soft.”

“Is that a problem?” It was something Crowley loved about Aziraphale.

“No. Maybe. I just think of Adam, being so young and being... visible.” Aziraphale turned to Crowley. “And you, with makeup and what have you. All I ever did was university and the proper routes and. Well. Nothing exactly groundbreaking.”

“You’ve been in a relationship with a man for the past three years,” Crowley said. “It’s not like you’ve been hiding away at home.” 

“But…” said Aziraphale softly. “Being with you isn’t _hard_. It’s the easiest thing I do.”

Crowley wanted to point out that neither he nor Adam were acting _intentionally_ rebellious, more that their actions were _deemed_ rebellious. Well, Crowley did get some pleasure in going against the grain, but the constant fuss was exhausting. And, if he could, he’d prefer to have grown up without his desires being criminal, to be able to marry Aziraphale, hold his hand in the street, share a bed in a hotel. In fact, as much as he enjoyed the occasional compliment for his appearance in Bang or the pubs, the glares and sneers and under-the-breath insults in daylight didn’t balance the scales on the bad days. His true self existed only in the shadows of night and the lights of the dancefloor, in the back-bars green rooms with Madame Tracey, and in the tiny flat above the bookshop.

He also wanted to say that, had Aziraphale come out as young as Adam, he almost certainly would’ve found himself on the streets - or, more likely, irreparably cut off from familial warmth. Both of them had had bad luck in the parent department, really, but at least Crowley generally knew where he stood. He used to be able to sense the anger from his parents the moment he stepped through the door. Aziraphale’s were more the silent treatment type. Ignore, ignore, ignore the problem until Aziraphale was begging them to just _tell him_ what he did wrong.

He didn’t point this out, though, because it would be cruel to bring up. Instead, he wrapped Aziraphale into a hug because he felt so full of emotions he didn’t know what to do, then said, “Hot chocolate before you go to bed? Water bottle? Bath?”

“Maybe a bath,” Aziraphale said.

“I’ll run it. Go get a book.”

Crowley went to the bathroom and rinsed down the tub, then started the taps running while he got Aziraphale some clean pyjamas. While he got clean and relaxed, Crowley put on _Space Oddity_ , the record he’d discovered when he was barely twenty, and put his headphones over his ears and lay back on their bed with his eyes closed and chest hurting. When he was younger, he liked to imagine he was like one of those men who got to fly above the earth; he’d watched the moon landing with a fair amount of jealousy. As it was, he was a person with no qualifications except two low pass CSEs (in Maths and Resistant Materials), an apprenticeship in mechanics, and a Madame Tracy approved knack for makeup. Really, though, he wouldn’t choose any other life. 

Slowly, as he couldn’t see anything, or hear anything but the music, he felt himself unwind, only getting up reluctantly to flip the record onto the B side.

It wasn’t until _God Knows I’m Good_ that through his eyelids he saw the light go out, and then the bed dipped. Gentle hands ran through his hair, and taking off the headphones in the process. Crowley didn’t have to open his eyes to know what Aziraphale looked like right now, but he did anyway, because he enjoyed the looking. His hair was curling at the ends where it wasn’t so damp, fizzing and glimmering in the street light, the way it did when he didn’t style it. Loose and soft PJs, the buttons parted down to his chest, the ties at his waist undone.

Aziraphale kissed him, his tongue soft against Crowley’s bottom lip. Crowley pushed in to meet it, hand trailing from head to hip, felt Aziraphale solid and warm on top of him, their legs tangled. Heat between them, heat in Crowley’s heart.

“Even if it was a choice,” Aziraphale whispered into the darkness, “I’d still choose this - and you.”

It took Crowley a moment to catch up. “I‘d choose you too,” he murmured against Aziraphale’s mouth. “Always, angel. Always.”

He loved Aziraphale so much, and he hated that he didn’t always know how to say it. As he’d been growing up, it seemed a thousand people told him they loved him or cared for him and yet were mean bastards anyway, so words didn’t matter much to him. Asides from when they were from Aziraphale, who through words and action, Crowley knew always meant it.

But what Crowley always knew how to do was _show_ love.

The record still played, tinny and near inaudible behind Crowley’s ear, until the final track played and the record came to a halt when the needle found the end of the grooves. And intimacy came as easy nowadays, when it was just the two of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! My tumblr at [sleepymoritz](https://sleepymoritz.tumblr.com/post/186449836051/let-all-the-children-use-it-sleepymoritz).
> 
> Historical notes: Sappho's was a real lesbian social club, and Bang was the first dedicated gay club in London (but, it's now been renamed to G-A-Y, which I'm sure will be familiar to those who live in Manchester and London).


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